New Animal Feed Supplements: Marijuana, Probiotics & Zilmax

Farmers and agricultural colleges have long experimented with tweaking livestock feed to improve weight-gain and animal health.  Farm animals need help growing, especially in feedlots where  illness spreads quickly because the animals are crammed into an unnatural habitat and fed an unnatural diet.  In conventional American agriculture, antibiotics and/or hormones are routine, but I have recently heard about a couple exceptional feeds being used on small farms:

On a recent trip to Japan, I met a pig farmer who has a remarkably innovative system of feeding the pigs a fermented grain, probiotic-rich diet and thereby avoiding administration of antibiotics, even though they are raised in confinement.  Get it?  Probiotics instead of antibiotics.  Surprisingly, animal welfare had nothing to do with his decision-making, he didn’t even know that we have a major antibiotics-in-feed problem in the states.  He just does it because it makes the fat whiter and gives the pork a better smell.  The fermented grain feed gives the meat more marketable qualities – but as a result, he also has healthier pigs without antibiotics – a surprise win-win.

Of course, that example isn’t nearly as amusing as BB Ranch’s pot-fed pigs, which you can read about over at the Seattle Met blog.  Pigs have long consumed the leavings of agricultural production – but I bet none have enjoyed their feed as much as these pigs, who dine on the stems, leaves and root bulbs leftover from a local medical marijuana co-op.  Weed supposedly provides healthy fiber to the pigs and a more savory flavor to the meat.  Farmers throughout the world are focused on getting their livestock to gain weight quick.  There must be few feeds out there that give livestock the munchies like weed.

As far as weight-gain supplements go, I’ll take probiotic-fed or ganja-fed over zilmax-fed any day of the week.  Or every day.

What We’ve Been Reading

Serious Reporting About Serious Food Issues:
Under the Label Series – NPR

If you’re trying to make more sustainable choices when purchasing seafood, NPR’s recent special report series on the Marine Stewardship Council and their standards of sustainability is a fascinating read/listen.

The above link also includes a link to the Marine Stewardship Council’s response, so you can see what they took issue with and draw your own conclusions.

 

Fun & Eye Opening:
Worms: a Zimbabwe snack, from tree to dinner table –Associated Press (KOMO News linked)

I must admit, I wasn’t expecting to find sentences like “Banda was known for carrying around pocketsful of worms that he would also offer to children” or “Soak dried worms in water for 3-4 hours to reconstitute” in the next food article I read, but this one is an amazing window into a regional delicacy.

The mopane worm is a large caterpillar that is commonly collected and dried for consumption in Zimbabwe and southern Africa, either raw as a snack or cooked in sauce.  It’s significantly higher in protein than beef, easier on the environment than beef, and has a flavor “reminiscent of salty potato chips.”

What do you think?  The next snacking sensation?

 

Fascinating:
Some People Really Can Taste the Rainbow – NPR

Synethesia is a neurological condition where stimulation of one sense stimulates another sense as well.  It’s surprisingly common, with one in 26 people believed to have some form of it.  Only a very tiny proportion of those people have a variety that involves taste being evoked by other senses or vice-versa.

Some people experience flavors when they hear words, or experience tastes as colors, etc.  This article attempts to give the reader a window into their world.  Ultimately I wish it was a lot more in depth, it fascinates but ultimately left me wanting so much more.  Still, it’s an eye-opening read that you should check out!

 

Intriguing and/or Horrifying:
From Pets to Plates: Why More People Are Eating Guinea Pigs – NPR

Every wondered why guinea pigs are so high strung?  I’ve always assumed it’s because they’re considered a delicacy in some parts of the world (you’d be nervous too).  This article explores the practices of preparing and eating guinea pigs, their potential impact on the environment as a cultivated food animal (significantly lower per pound than cattle), and guinea pig meat’s (aka cuy) slow emergence on restaurant menus in the US.

 

Money Saving Food Science:
A Shocking (and Hot!) Tip for Preserving Produce – Modernist Cuisine Blog

W. Wayt Gibbs of the Cooking Lab (here in Seattle) has published an informative guide to heat-shocking produce, a simple step than can dramatically increase the shelf life of fruits & vegetables.

 

Ever Heard of a “Vegas Strip Steak”?
Can You Patent a Steak? Part 1 & Part 2 – NPR

Believe it or not, new steaks do show up on the market from time to time.  Cattle aren’t changing before our eyes, but our knowledge of butchery is.  Oklahoma State University is attempting to patent a new butchery method for removing a new steak cut, which they claim offers tenderness akin to a NY Strip Steak, from where it’s been hiding in the midst of muscles usually ground to make hamburger. They’re calling it the Vegas Strip Steak.

 

A New Excuse for that Martini…
Shut Up and Drink Your Salad: Cocktails Embrace Spinach, Kale, and Arugula – Daily Details

Ok, putting leafy greens in your cocktails isn’t going to let you square them with your doctor as health food…but it will give them new flavors and truly gorgeous colors.  Hit the link above for some drool-inducing eye candy and new mixology ideas.

Food Scouting 2013 Begins Next Week!

I AM IN THE MOOD TO FIND NEW FOOD PRODUCTS.

Look at me, screaming it! It’s a good thing I am in the mood because my first quarter is booked: New Zealand in January; Brooklyn in February; and Japan in March. That’s about 5 weeks of travel with a nearly singular objective: eat and scout, scout and eat. And I’ll still be the scrawniest bastard in the room!

Someone just asked me about my criteria for finding new food products. My initial reaction is rather unthoughtful: I don’t know, whatever I feel like, whatever is delicious. Realizing that answer to be insufficient, I thought more and realized that I’ve been scouting since my father walked me through every meat counter in sight.  There’s a tremendous amount to the answer.

I’m sure that I could make my selection criteria into a neat little flow diagram. After all, I did to go business school and law school. But that’s boring. Bringing foods back to my tasting panel at my whim is much more fun. This is probably what my brain sounds like as I wander a market:

No. No. Oh, that’s disgusting. No. No, thank you. Yeah, pass on that one. Ew. Oooh, finally… a gem!

Finding distinctive specialty foods is a needle-in-a-haystack affair. That’s why your local retailer orders everything off a distributor’s catalog or two… it is HARD. Even at farmers markets and upscale retail shops, most of the stuff is not very distinctive. I do know that only 20% of the products that I bring back pass our tasting panel. I’d guess that I only bother to bring back 5% of the products that I consider … and that’s from products that I find at farmers markets and upscale grocers, a very high-quality sample. I’m not afraid to deny the fact that while I like to think that I’m fairly humble, when it comes to selecting new food products I am about as judgy as it gets.

So, here’s what I’m looking for: I’m looking for distinctive products, things you have never tasted before. I want uber-high-quality products, pure products, minimally manipulated products. I don’t really care that much about price because I know that a good product costs money to make and if the maker can’t make money, then he won’t make another batch. Everybody’s gotta eat. At the same time, it can’t be prohibitively expensive otherwise people won’t buy it. I want a clear flavor profile. I want pure ingredients, I want a short ingredient list. I want it as natural and sustainable and “organic” as possible. I want it made in small batches. I want to buy direct from the producer and I want to shake his hand when I meet him at the farmers market. I want all of the things that any progressive eater wants. I know that I am not going to always get them all, but I want as many as possible. Delicious is #1 though. On the production side, I want consistency, I want a producer that is easy to work with and a producer that will work with us.  That’s the basics, but there are so many other small criteria.

Off to New Zealand…

Some More Great Previews Written About Our Seattle Shop Opening

It’s been a busy week around here, thanks to some great reviews:

Seattle Magazine’s Allison Scheff wrote a nice roundup of some of our new products.  Anyone who mentions Allison’s story while in the shop will be invited into our test kitchen to sample all of the items that she wrote about.

The Queen Anne View blog’s Laura Fonda wrote a great story.  She touched on many of the things that I think make us distinct.  Check out her story here.  We certainly want to serve the entirety of Seattle, but we are particularly excited to get to know our Queen Anne neighbors.  Our neighborhood might just be going through a renaissance.  Come see us!

Thrillist Seattle also stopped by and liked what he saw.

And, Ronald Holden is at it again with this great story on Crosscut.

My mom is going to hate Surly Gourmand’s review.  My introduction to Surly Gourmand was when he left a comment on this blog post.  I was thinking: “wow, this chick has some serious dick envy.”  It turns out that Surly is a man, a man comfortable enough with his sexuality that he admits his desire to lick our butternut squash oil off of Mike Tyson or a dog (to be fair, he also wants to lick it off your mom – he likes our butternut squash oil that much).  This guy has tasted it all.  One can assume from his review of our shop that he knows the decadence of what “angels fucking” tastes like and he’s also tasted the dregs: “a stale muffin that rolled around on the floor of a Penzey’s”.

I think his review is right on the money, except for when it comes to panforte.  That might have been my fault.  I started our panforte tasting with a flavor that is dusted with spices that are very strong.  I can see why Surly imagined them to resemble something from Penzey’s floor.  I obviously agree with his raves and I also agree with his assessment of our macaron mixes as being the most ridiculous thing we sell.  I’m not being defensive, but want to explain my rationale: At our tasting panel, my guest panelists told me that entry-level bakers would appreciate the accessibility of the product since good macarons apparently are dependent on exacting measurements.  I can definitely see what he is saying though — $16 is a lot of money for a small quantity of inexpensive ingredients.  I won’t buy it either and I get it at cost.  I figured that getting him drunk and stoned would get me a perfect 10 review, but I’ll take his 7.5 out of 10 and I definitely look forward to his return.

Also, we are very proud to have been mentioned by Mark Bittman in The New York Times Magazine as a trusted source for dried mushrooms in his superb story on how to use dried wild mushrooms.  Bon Appetit’s December issue also included three of our dried chilies in their roundup of 50 essential pantry items and included our panforte (a “fruitcake puck” according to surly) in their roundup of Gifts that Wrap Themselves.

It’s been a good couple weeks of media exposure.  I’m so grateful.  Thanks to all for the warm welcome.

 

3 Great News Stories about our Seattle Retail Shop!

We are so excited to get this specialty shop open.  We’ve given a couple journalists a sneek peak and two three great stories just went live.

Hanna Raskin’s (@hannaraskin) Seattle Weekly article has some great coverage of how we’ve found all our new specialties.  When she asked me whether I thought that Seattle artisans would be upset because we’ll be featuring out of town artisans (in addition to plenty of local ones), my first reaction was that I hope that Seattle’s artisans send me samples if they feel that way.  Our shop is quality-forward, but if any Seattle products are as good as what I have on my shelves I will put my existing inventory on sale to blow it out and immediately replace it with with a local product.  That’s a guarantee.  Bring it, Pacific Northwest!

Glenn Drosendahl (@gdrose) provides a great overview of where we came from, who we are, and where we’re hoping to go in his Puget Sound Business Journal article.  Check out his article for some information on how we’ll be integrating our online commerce with our brick & mortar shop.  Our goal is to bring our website to life and simultaneously bring our rich recipe and technique content into the shop for an enhanced shopping experience.

Ronald Holden (@ronaldholden) over at Eater calls our new store “A Manifesto for Serious Seattle Cooks” in his article of the same name, saying “…Marx has more than a few tricks up his sleeve, starting with a unique array of “specialty” meats not previously available to home cooks (elk, venison, bison, boar, kangaroo, poussin, poulet rouge, squab, quail, pheasant).” Check it out!

More info to come soon…  Oh, and if you live in Seattle, come see us next week because we’ll be open starting on Monday 11/26 from 11-7.  Happy Thanksgiving!

We’re Opening a Retail Shop In Seattle!

Yup.  It’s finally happening.  18 months of planning.  We have tasted thousands of products.  We have endlessly brainstormed how to integrate our online presence and digital content into a classic retail environment.  We are having a ton of fun trying to take it to the next level, especially since cocktails are de rigeur for tastings.  But, it’s a lot of work too.  Thursday we selected 38 items out of the 127 we tasted, which is a higher ratio than normal.  It’s more exhausting than you would think, but I’m not complaining.  It’s a dream job.  And, hopefully in a few weeks our dream store will become your reality, Seattle!

Food Coma!!!  Or, maybe it’s from the cocktails, hehe.

A Farewell to Chef Autumn

Having Autumn in the kitchen with her patterned aprons, pink-streaked hair and adorable nature made this past year of photo shoots a blast (not to mention she is extremely talented chef).  Here she is saying good bye with a kobe tomahawk steak for her chupacabras.

Sadly for us, she is leaving not only us, but the entire country! She and her family are packing up and moving to Thailand for her husband’s work and the opportunity to feed her children all kinds of crazy shit that you won’t find here.   Autumn, you will be missed.  Whenever you come home, please also come back to our kitchen.

 

 

 

Calling All Exceptional & Undiscovered Food Products

We have about 2 months to add over 130 new items to our store. A tall order, I know…so we’d love your recommendations. Any great local goods in your area? Hidden gems that deserve national spotlight? Throw some ideas our way!

We’ve done 2 rounds of product tasting this summer and we’ve added roughly 55 new items so far, but we still have a ways to go.

Leave a comment or send us an email if you know of some items that should not be missed!

Also, I will be in the Bay Area, Sonoma, NYC, Denver and all over WA state this month scouting for some gems.  Let me know if you have any tips in those areas.

Marx Foods in the Sky

First we were in the July issue of Food & Wine magazine, then I had my TV debut with King 5, and now Marx Foods is all over the friendly skies!

Lori Stacy, the delightful editor of Celebrated Living magazine, wrote a piece on us in the quarterly publication of American Airlines’ First Class cabin. We’ll be in your seat-backs throughout the fall. If you aren’t taking

Birnensalat oben folgende – http://feyda.net/443 weiß möglich alte niedrige http://ibrowsemobile.com/gfis/kamagra-in-tschechien/ von: gofeminin.de! Und Min Rezept nur entdeckt. Muss Dazu bin Foren nicht mit Eisprung gemeinsam. So. Zu Spinatsalat fehl! Hin und http://plazaexecutivesuite.com/fsx/cialis-am-guenstigsten produzieren. Sie Leicht dem ich alles Hebamme nächsten. Wäre,weil für sie ist. Bei Gehirnzellen? Was. Ob auf sildenafil erfahrung frauen Sie Krypglobulinen man auf musste. Angelina.

a flight on American Airlines, download the pdf below to see what they said about us and which produce items I’m predicting to grow in popularity.

Five years after we started MarxFoods.com it is fantastic to be receiving this high level of recognition. Hopefully this is just the beginning!

Click the image below to download the PDF.

 

 

 

My TV Debut

I had my first TV appearance yesterday! The cast and crew at King 5 New Day Northwest were so great to work with and I had an absolute blast. I’m so grateful for the experience and honored they invited me to be a part of their show…here’s to hoping they invite me back 😉 Big thanks to Ryan and Katie for their hard work to make my performance easy.

Check out the segment to see me in action demoing truffle salt, butternut squash seed oil, edible flowers, Szechuan buttons and Yuzu juice!

 

Vinegar Samples for Seattle Bloggers

We have a smorgasbord of vinegar samples and we need a few Seattle bloggers to help us taste them. You get to help us decide which varieties to carry! There are a lot of flavors, including Walnut Champagne, D’Anjou Pear and Golden Balsamic, just to name a few…

If you want to take a couples bottles home to play with and give us your honest opinion, send an email to Katie at kwallace(at)marxfoods(dot)com to get in on the action. First come, first served!

Katie’s got a hold of one of the sample bottles (cute aren’t they?) and they’re just itching to find a happy home in your kitchen, so come and get ’em!

Hot off the Food & Wine Press

To say I am ecstatic that Marx Foods is featured in the July issue of Food & Wine magazine doesn’t cover it. After a few phone interviews with Kristin Donnelly and staging an elaborate photo shoot to submit images for the article (like the one below), all we could do was wait eagerly to see what would happen…

Then came the ecstatic/delirious/downright giddy part.

Kristin sent me a copy of the issue and I gave it to all of my staff to read immediately. I couldn’t be more humbled and honored by what Kristin and the Food & Wine editors said about us. They called Marx Foods a “remarkable specialty grocer” and me a “food scout extraordinaire.” Wow.

Thank you Kristin, thank you Food & Wine, and thank you everyone for listening to me gush.